Additional Info

Nearby Theaters

The Warner Drive-In, Orange County’s seventh drive-in built since 1941, opened quietly on June 29, 1961 with just a small ad announcing its attractions, “The Wackiest Ship in the Army” and “They Came to Cordova”. In later listings it shared billing under the Family Drive-In Theatre with the Lincoln Drive-In, formerly the Cina-Car (375 cars), which opened in the late-1940’s as the county’s second-built drive-in.

Both theaters charged $1.50 a carload for second-run movies but their fare improved after they became Pacific drive-ins on February 14, 1962. In fact, every county drive-in that started as an independent eventually was under the Pacific Theatre banner. The 600-car Warner’s last day of operation was in October of 1984, and, as usual, retail stores were later built on the site.

This Drive-In was at the corner of Warner and Gothard in Huntington Beach. I remember going there to see a re-release of Bambi in the late sixties or early seventies with a carload of family members. It had a playground just below the screen where there would be houndreds of kids playing before the film started. Around the parameter of the complex were many huge eucalyptus trees. Just before it closed, Edwards Theatres opened a brand new megaplex at the Charter Center a block away. That was death for this place.

This was actually close to the Harbor Drive-in so we often wound up here if the film there was one we had seen or it was crowded. This theater was subject often to the thick fogs that rolled in from the beach since this was a low lying area. Of course sometimes with a date you may never notice the fog since you werenâ€™t watching the film anyway.